Review

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a bad
movie. It's very bad. It's not "so bad it's good," it's just bad.
It's disjointed, uninspiring, and contrived. It's not even a collection of
good fight scenes folded into a bad movie. It's a collection of bad scenes,
barely linked together with a Swiss cheese plot that, at various times,
contains imaginative moments. These moments are rare, fleeting, and barely
redemptive. For those who care to know, however, the "plot" is that Lady
Laura Croft (Angelina Jolie) is tasked with finding Pandora's Box. Once
opened, the box will release a plague across the planet, killing everything and
everyone. Of course, some maniac arms dealer played by Ciaran Hinds (The
Sum of All Fears, Road to Perdition) wants to find the box first and
sell it to the highest bidder. In the meantime, Lara jumps from tall
buildings, fights with all types of weaponry, drives a Land Rover, and engages
in semi-romantic-interludes with her former lover, Terry Sheridan, played by
Gerard Butler (Tomorrow Never Dies, Reign of Fire). Yes, in case
you're wondering, you've already seen this movie – done far better – many, many
times.

The score, though, is a different story entirely. Composed
by Alan Silvestri, it is better than the film itself both on a substantive
level, and for the simple fact that it is astoundingly more cohesive than the
film for which it was written. The music begins with the pumping rhythms one
typically associates with a Jan de Bont film (Speed, Twister,
Speed 2) in "Opening". This kind of techno-driven music reappears
from time to time throughout the score, ("I Need Terry Sheridan" and "Flower
Pagoda Battle"), but it doesn't dominate.

Fortunately, Silvestri spent most of his time infusing the
music with the magical elements found in "The Luna Temple" and the
slightly cultural cues found in tracks like "Arrival in China".
Silvestri has shown a great deal of range on this score, as "The Luna
Temple" and "The Cradle of Life," which sound like a mix of Indiana
Jones and Star Trek, demonstrate. I would point to The Mummy
Returns as a not-so-distant cousin. He does an interesting job of mixing
influences from Thomas Newman (Red Corner) to Mark Mancina (Return to
Paradise) to John Williams (Indiana Jones Trilogy), and weaving them
together successfully. Of course, considering that at this point in his career
Silvestri has scored over 100 films, success shouldn't come as a surprise.
What does come as a surprise is that he poured so much of his talent
into such a waste of celluloid. And even more surprising than that is
that even Silvestri's considerable talents couldn't save the film from its own
embarrassing self. But considering he was unceremoniously dropped from Pirates
of the Caribbean, and replaced composer Craig Armstrong on this film, it's
somewhat surprising he was able to pull off as good a job as he did. But I
digress…

One of the true joys of this score is that although it
adopts some of the technotronics currently in vogue, it stills pays homage to
the adventure scores of years past in which the music was a cue to the audience
not to just "get pumped," but to behold in awe what was happening on
screen ("Orb Transmission" and "Pandora's Box.") In this
case, of course, what was happening on screen created no sense of awe, but
Silvestri did his damndest to fill the void. "Pandora's Box"
practically had me in tears just listening to it, but in the film the scene was
laughable - note to Jan de Bont: this is not a good sign.

This is one of those times when the film did not live up to
the promise of the music that was accompanying it. Moral of the story? Buy
this soundtrack, listen to it, enjoy it, and let the scenes play out in your
imagination, for that will be immeasurably more entertaining than if you watch
the movie.